


Interrogatories

by cat_77



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Implications of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-13
Updated: 2012-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 05:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three of the team captured, three of the team free, and at least a dozen goons to go through - the odds could be better, but they could also be a hell of a lot worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interrogatories

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "interrogation" square for hc_bingo.
> 
> * * *

From Clint's standpoint, things were not going well. Stark was unconscious and sans suit, all sorts of tools piled on a table behind him to no doubt screw with his reactor or fuck with the few metal plates still attached to his wrists and ankles. Natasha hung from her wrists, more than a single slice across her fair skin and eye rapidly swelling shut. Cap slouched in a chair beside her, apparently dead to the world from whatever they had given him that had somehow counteracted the super physiology and knocked him on his ass. Vials and needles lined the table beside the other tools, and it didn't take a genius to guess what they had planned.

But still he held his ground. He waited for the signal that he knew would come because, really, his life was as good as over if he moved a single second too soon.

His comm was silent, turned off and shoved into a pocket after listening to Fury got a bit too distracting. Thor was up high on the outside, scanning for an out and watching for the real culprit in this whole stupid mess. Bruce was waiting in the wings, ready to take his rage out on the nearest enemy, be it living being or physical construct.

But Clint ignored all of that, at least for now. He was high in the rafters, buried behind broken lighting and discarded equipment, a clear line of sight on what mattered most. He stayed there, bow at the ready, and simply waited.

He waited while needle after needle broke off in Cap's veins. He waited while they switched to a blade and managed a trickle into a tiny glass tube. He waited while they poked and prodded at the reactor and tried to figure out how to separate it from the casing. He waited while one of the goons damn near electrocuted himself in the attempt. He waited while Natasha swung with the force of yet another blow, blood dripping from her smile as she refused to tell them what they wanted. He waited while they asked again and again where the package was, where their teammate was, and what they were doing in the facility in the middle of the night, in the middle of a set up.

Finally, when Tony stirred as though the blue lines of electricity really did hurt and Steve managed to lift his head to glare at their captors, Natasha spit blood at the man closest to her and mouthed the word, "Now."

Clint's arrow flew true as always and sliced through the rope that held her wrists to the beam. She took out her man and was already working on Cap's bonds by the time his second arrow took out the man attempting to shoot them both. A third arrow flared through the now broken glass of the window above them, and that's when all hell broke loose.

SHIELD agents swarmed the compound, but were far behind the combined forces of Thor and Hulk, simply rushing over the pesky debris of what used to be support beams or doors. Natasha busied herself realigning Tony's reactor, while a now freed Steve worked on anyone who got too close to his teammates. He didn't appear up to full strength yet, but still managed to take down anyone stupid enough to come near him.

When Nat called Cap's name, Steve easily switched places, hefting a pissed off Tony over his shoulder and making for the cover of the cadre of agents finally breaking into the room. Thor took down two of the gathered goons and Hulk took seven, which worried Clint a bit as he remembered an even dozen in this room alone and Steve and Nat had really only damaged the others but not fully taken them out of the picture yet.

He found them of course when a bullet whizzed past his arm, taking a gouge of skin along the way, and when said bullet was followed by something determinedly not a bullet, but apparently from the cache of toys that they had planned on using on the others. The entire rafter lit up with arcs of blue light, both blinding him briefly and sending him into spasms of pain.

He felt himself reel backwards, and then he felt himself in free fall, for all of about a single terrifying second before he was caught by Thor and tossed haphazardly behind the green wall of the Hulk, the safety of one of the few remaining standing structures and a shitload of agents surrounding him.

"Kingpin's on the move," he told them. His nerves were as fried as the comm in his pocket, and he could barely hold an arrow steady let alone notch it properly, but he was not about to tell them that. Thor and Hulk led the way and he followed on unsteady feet knowing that, if he could just keep moving, no one would dare try to stop him.

His teammates went left but something in his gut told him to go right, and a handful of agents followed, either trusting his lead or there to stop him from doing something stupid that would get himself killed. Natasha appeared at his side, picking weapons from junior agents as she slid up beside him, her shoulder steadying him far more than he was willing to admit.

She would've had to felt the jump in his muscles, the tiny tremor that he fought to control, the after effects of whatever they had shot towards him minutes or hours ago. "Can you do this?" she asked, voice not much more than an exhalation.

"I can sight it, but I don't know if my hands will hold," he admitted.

She nodded, either expecting as much or accepting the honesty, but did not try to get him to turn back. They advanced together, barely touching as she grounded his every move.

"What did you learn?" he asked, knowing she had been doing far more than acting as a punching bag.

"Product is with the big guy, not yet complete. They were hoping we had the final piece or pieces, that part I wasn't sure about," she replied. A flip of a blade and someone he barely noticed fell from the shadows.

"And they thought we brought it with us?" he asked, doubtingly. 

He did not question her word, but he did question their intelligence, a point driven home when she shrugged, "I didn't say they were bright."

One of the agents behind them snorted so Clint didn't have to, but it keyed off a chain reaction of identification and attack. The goons protecting the leader heard them and circled back around, guns already firing, and the leader and his head henchman - the one Natasha had spit at earlier from the looks of it - took off running.

The agents took on the goons, and he and Natasha took off after the men with the pretty shiny suitcase. The ruckus and mild chaos was easy enough to ignore as Clint lined up the shot to take out the waiting transport. What was not easy to ignore was the way his hands still shook, muscles and nerves refusing to fully obey his commands as the tiny little sparks of energy still cascaded through them.

Natasha stepped closer, towards him and not their target, and wrapped her smaller hands around his, aligned her arms beneath and beside his own, steadying him and holding him in place. "Take the shot," she told him. She trusted his eyes and he trusted her strength, and together they took the bastard down, henchman, transport, and all.

When it was over, when Nat's drying blood itched against his own and Stark was insulting her skills as an electrician, when Cap was leaning just a bit too much on Bruce as they shuffled their way back to the large nondescript black vehicle waiting for them all, and while Thor questioned why he should not just destroy the random artifact instead of letting SHIELD having another chance to lose it, he couldn't help but to knock against her and whisper, "Thanks."

She bumped her shoulder against his, and then steadied him when he nearly toppled over, and said, "You can repay me by actually going to Medical this time."

He eyed her sideways, taking in the scratches and blood and swollen eye, and hedged, "I go where you go."

She smiled at him, teeth tinged the same red as her lips, and said, "Always."

 

End.


End file.
